Why ChatGPT stops a chat
ChatGPT sent the largest share of traffic from AI chatbots to websites in South Africa in September 2026: 80.3%, according to Statcounter. Microsoft's Global AI Diffusion report of May 2026 estimates diffusion in South Africa at 23.1% in the first quarter of 2026, up from 19.3% in the first half of 2025.
ChatGPT works with a limited amount of context for each reply, called the context window. When the chat gets too big for that space, ChatGPT can't add another message, so it stops. You can still open, read and copy the old chat. You just can't add to it.
What a new chat needs
Not the whole old chat. Pasting it all in fills the new one up again. A new chat needs four things:
- The goal: what you're working on.
- What's decided, so it doesn't reopen it.
- The rules you kept repeating: tone, format, what to avoid.
- Where you stopped: the latest version of the work.
Write a handoff by hand
Open a new chat and start it with a short message like this:
Let's continue where we left off. Don't reopen what's below. GOAL: [what we're working on] DECIDED: [the choices already made] RULES: [tone, format, what to avoid] WHERE WE ARE: [the latest version, or where we stopped] Continue from here.
Uses tasks. Handoff uses tasks from your plan. You see the cost before you start.
Uncook's Handoff writes that message for you. On the ChatGPT page, click the Uncook icon and pick Handoff. It reads the chat, even one that has reached its maximum length, and gives you a prompt with your goal, what's decided, the rules you set and where you stopped.
Read it, change what you want, then copy it into a new chat.
Uses tasks. Handoff uses tasks from your plan. You see the cost before you start.
Questions people ask
Uses tasks. Handoff uses tasks from your plan. You see the cost before you start.
Does starting a new chat delete the old one? No. The old chat stays in your history.
Can I continue in Gemini or Copilot instead? Yes. A handoff is plain text, so you can paste it into any AI.
Start fresh,
without starting over.
Add to Chrome
We don't keep the conversations you bring. When you click Send to Uncook in the extension window, the extension sends the chat from your tab to our servers, encrypted, for up to 30 minutes, and we delete it as soon as your Uncook page opens it. What Uncook makes from it is kept as a task, for as long as our Privacy page says. Neither your chats nor your tasks are used to train AI models.